Hintz (above) apologized, said the newspaper, to Rep. Michelle Litjens, a Republican from a neighboring district, “when I learned my comments may have been taken personally by someone.”

Hintz was reported, first by WTMJ’s Charlie Sykes, as having shouted, “You are … dead!” at Litjens, with a vulgarity inserted, after the Assembly voted to move the budget-repair bill on toward a final vote. Litjens was hesitant at first to discuss the matter — she brought it up to Republican leaders, and news leaked out from there — but she was confirming it by Monday afternoon.

Hintz “walked right up and said what he said. ‘You are F-ing dead.’ Said the whole thing,” she told me — he didn't leave out anything between the F and the -ing.

Litjens was quick to say that the debate, up to around 60 straight hours in the Assembly by that point, had been civil for the most part. The atmosphere was tense, what with protesters raging in the rotunda, she said, but lawmakers were remaining polite — at least until it came time to vote. Then came the over-the-top rage.

“I’ve known Gordon for years,” said Litjens, “so I was really taken aback when he said that.” She did not take the shout, she said, as a death threat but as a political one, and felt it was aimed at Republicans rather than her personally. She said it “meant a lot” that Hintz apologized Monday, “but at the same time, we should be able to have civility on the floor.”

Hintz wasn’t the only out-of-control lawmaker. At least one lawmaker sitting in the Democrats’ area reacted to the Assembly’s final approval of the bill by throwing either a cup or a bottle of water at Republicans. Lawmakers sitting nearby confirmed this, and Litjens said that when she saw that, she ducked and made for the exit.

I wrote the other day that while Democrats appear to have no real plan for controlling spiraling public-sector labor costs, they seem instead to have an absolute certainty that their side is morally right and in exclusive possession of rightness. That would certainly fit. Anger is normal when losing a vote, especially as inevitably as this, but how do you explain lawmakers who feel the moment calls for “outbursts” that require later apologies, who feel that cup throwing is justified? Half the Democratic Legislative caucus feels somehow justified in shutting down the Senate entirely. Mobs outside feel justified in shutting down reports by news correspondents they don’t agree with.

It’s tempting to let it pass until you remember that not a month ago, the left was still delivering pious lectures about how conservatives ought to watch their mouths lest they set off gunmen. The left spent two years prattling on about how dangerously impolite tea parties were, how Fox News ought to be shut down for the good of civility. Then the moment the teachers union’s death grip on our schools and our wallets faces a challenge, the left reacts hysterically, dropping the F-bomb in the Assembly and parading with signs about gang rape.

The best answer, of course, is to remain utterly polite in the face of it — we do all have to live together, once the budget is passed — and to remember, the next time the left is back to lecturing us, that they mean not a syllable of it as anything other than political tactic.

Meanwhile:Aaron Rodriguez has more on the cup-throwing incident, including a "no comment" from the lawmaker named by lawmakers all around him.

Also: Why is it that at least one prominent union backer, asks John Steele Gordon in Commentary, has to pretend that it’s still the 1950s, workers are still interchangeable and that the Wisconsin protesters aren’t working for the government? I’ll tell you: The union backer in question is playing rhetorical T-ball.

About Patrick McIlheran

A professional journalist since 1986, I worked as a reporter, copy editor and news designer at newspapers around Wisconsin and Minnesota before coming to the Journal Sentinel in 1997. I've written an opinion column since 2004. I grew up in western Racine County, am married and have three children. I now live in Milwaukee.